


The People Who Stare At Mooses

by PrairieDawn



Series: I'm a Doctor, not a Deity [3]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Canon Divergence at Where No Man Has Gone Before, Cross Country Skiing, Head Injury, I know they're all so injury prone, I suspect they're all going to get suckered into ice fishing, M/M, Moose, Probably kind of fluffy with a side order of bureaucrats are evil, Shiny McCoy AU, Winter Holiday mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-02-15 08:20:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13027032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: But only because they're blocking the road.McCoy, Kirk, Spock, and Scotty head to Thunder Bay, Ontario to visit the Herald Foundation and enjoy nature.  In Canada.  In December.  Also moose jokes and ice fishing.  Because only I would be mean enough to make Spock go ice fishing.I misspelled moose on purpose.





	1. Shore Leave

**Author's Note:**

> Extra thanks to informal betas, including Perfect_Square!

“Wait, what?”

Kirk summarized their orders to McCoy a second time. “We have been diverted to Starbase 1, Earth orbit, for engine conditioning and cellular repair therapy for all crew members, to be combined with shore leave. Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy remains confined to Enterprise pending further investigation by Starfleet research staff.”

“So we’re back on Earth, but I’m stuck on the ship because I’m an unknown hazard.” He unleashed a stream of invective that would have made his Mama’s toes curl. “Yeah. I’m not playing that. I have a couple of superpowers the Admiralty hasn’t counted on.”

“And what would those be?”

“Old friends.”

 

He left the conference room for Sickbay to relieve Yosue from her stint on the night shift. They had finished the first pass through the regeneration beam and had been able to identify the most severely affected fifty or so crewpeople based on scans and symptoms. Most of the crew were suffering moderate symptoms of radiation exposure. Kirk had responded by switching from three shifts to four for everyone but the medical staff, so no one worked more than six hours a day. It meant they got less done, but as few members of the crew were up to heavy physical labor, most of the cleaning and maintenance tasks were going to have to wait anyway.

At least the first four crewmembers scheduled to go under the beam were prompt this morning. He swallowed, his stomach responding to their nausea. He passed out modesty coverings to each--they were no longer on such a tight schedule that the patients had to share the space naked--and issued each one of the three beds (or the cot) in the treatment room.

He wrote Admiral Maina at Starfleet Medical a request for change of venue to Thunder Bay, then left it to stew as a draft for an hour while he began the tedious process of signing off 430 charts, a task that could neither be made shorter ethically by writing a subroutine to get the computer to do it for him, nor was it much accelerated by his speeded up brain. Flip to the crewmember, check over the listing to make sure they hadn’t skipped a treatment, place his finger on the signing space until it registered. And again. Twenty-two patients in he found one, a young security noncom, who had never showed up for treatment, which was exactly why he had to do this himself and by hand.

He sent Rea off to collect the young man from his duty station, then considered his options. It was no secret to anyone that all that universal consciousness and esper crap made him deeply uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure if it was his granny’s unshakeably irrational belief in ghosts which had started it or his fifth grade teacher’s suspicion that he had cheated on tests because he made guesses on tests that were just a little too good to be random. Maybe it was an older fear, passed to him in his very DNA, or more likely in the rare and brief asides mentioned by older relatives about the branch of the family tree that had disappeared in 2056.

Regardless, it had meant he had almost subconsciously avoided personal or professional relationships with anyone who treated esper phenomena as more than a sideshow to real medicine. Tom Schoenbein had been the exception that proved the rule. He’d cornered him at half a dozen conferences to talk about anything and everything but esper phenomena, and the man’s demeanor was so unassumingly infectious it was impossible not to like him. Before this week, the only thing Tom had ever said to him on the subject was a mention that strange things sometimes happened out in the black, and if he ever needed to send a patient to Thunder Bay, the door was always open. 

He hadn’t figured on needing that open door for himself. Matters would be much, much simpler if he could just get the battery of tests Starfleet was planning to throw at him relocated to the planetside research facility. That and the opportunity for moose “hunting” and cross country skiing would appeal to Kirk and, he hoped, Scotty, so he wouldn’t have to make the trip alone. Ice fishing was also available, but that activity sounded like a punishment from one of the skeevier circles of Hell, in his opinion. They were close enough to Earth by now for real time subspace communications, so he put in a call to Tom.

He ended up playing phone tag because he hadn’t been paying attention to the time difference between Earth Standard ship time, also known as Greenwich mean time, and Eastern Standard time as measured near the Great Lakes in south central Canada. His message sent at 1000 hours ship time would arrive at 0500, a bit early to expect a prompt reply.

Tom called back at lunch. The blue eyed towhead appeared in red plaid flannel at a desk festooned with just slightly more Canadian kitch than was precisely tasteful. He was startled at the magnificent rack on the wall behind Tom until he remembered that moose antlers fell off yearly, so their former owner might well be peacefully browsing somewhere nearby. “So what’s this I hear about you stopping by Earthside for a visit?” His round voweled, casual Canadian accent brought a smile to McCoy’s face. It wasn’t a Georgia drawl, but anyone who bothered to maintain a regional dialect in the face of galactic standardization had his respect.

“I might not be,” he told Tom. “The ship will be docked at Starbase 1, but at present they’ve got me ordered to stay on it, as though I’m going to suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere or stage a coup at Starfleet Headquarters.”

“I know. My services have been requested and required up on Starbase 1. They seem to have forgotten I’m a civilian again.”

McCoy scratched through his hair. “I had been hoping, you have a fair amount of respect, as much as Starfleet respects any of the lot of you...us...I hoped perhaps you could argue for a change of venue.”

“Us indeed. Planning to take back that voodoo crack you made at last year’s space medicine conference anytime soon?”

McCoy’s face reddened slightly. “Still feels like voodoo to me. Like...I don’t know...like I ought to be turning in my Respectable Scientist card and buying a bunch of scented candles and amethyst.”

“No, you’re a Pioneer at the Forefront of Trophic Physics,” Tom teased, capitalizing the words with his voice. “I will make the effort. I sent a message to Admiral Maina at Starfleet Medical, she’s got a good head on her shoulders and clout enough to get a venue change. Now, I’m planning to fill my message with technical bullshit, but what is true is that we’ve got the best team and the best equipment down here and it just doesn’t make sense to try to relocate it all to Starbase One. And also, if you were for some reason to become a hazard, you’re better off in the Canadian wilderness that on a densely populated tin can in a vacuum.”

“Wilderness? Doesn’t Thunder Bay have a population of about 200,000 people?”

“Yah, but the Foundation is a bit out of town along the Kaministiquia River upstream of Kakabeka Falls. Besides, nobody at Starfleet thinks of Canada as civilization. It’s just moose and mounties out here, y’know. I’m getting ready for work now, but keep me posted.”

“Will do,” McCoy promised, and cut the connection. The Enterprise would arrive at Starbase One in less than 24 hours. The knowledge that Section 31 existed and wanted to get its hands on him had him spooked, but he had to figure out how to avoid them without letting on that he knew they existed. He was going to have to play stubborn country doctor to the hilt.


	2. Starbase 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy runs into Geoff M'Benga while awaiting permission to take shore leave on Earth.

McCoy was still waiting for word from Admiral Maina when the Enterprise docked at Starbase One. His first several hours on station were occupied with meetings with the base medical staff, bringing them up to speed on the crew’s ongoing radiation treatments and setting up a schedule to get all of them through a long enough exposure to the proton beam to satisfy him that he wasn’t condemning any of them to the inconvenience of cancer down the road.

Complicating his attempts to get anything done, he had to conveniently absent himself any time that jackass Admiral Enwright from Section 31 came by. Fortunately, the medical staff were remarkably forgetful about McCoy’s whereabouts, bless them. Also fortunately, he could feel the man coming, so he always had that little bit of extra notice to get himself out of sight.

That last bit, sensing all the people around him all the time, was becoming a problem. He’d been sharing a starship with roughly 430 other people for a little over a week since his powers had settled. The shields he had learned from Spock worked well enough there, and his expanded brain seemed able to file away or ignore most of what got around them on the ship. It helped that he knew most of them. The number of people on Starbase One and the ships docked with it numbered almost two orders of magnitude higher, virtually all of them strangers his mind seemed to want to identify and categorize before it would let him filter them out. Super brain notwithstanding, he’d felt like he was treading water from the moment he arrived on station.

An unfamiliar person stepped into the doorway of the supply closet. McCoy was standing with his back to the door, arms crossed in annoyance, using his telekinetic ability to put away a large number of slippery shrink wrapped warming blankets which had become dislodged while he was looking for cleanser. He pulled his mirror shades back down over his glowing eyes and turned in response to the person’s amused surprise. A younger man, black with short curls and wearing Starfleet scrubs, inclined his head an a surprisingly Vulcan gesture while smiling broadly. “Geoff M’Benga,” he said. “You must be Dr. Leonard McCoy. Need a hand with those?” He was shielded. Huh. He supposed that made some sense, given his time on Vulcan.

“Clearly I don’t,” McCoy replied. “Besides, I knocked them over, I should go to the trouble of picking them up.” He looked the other man over. “You should know I picked you for the Enterprise because of your experience on Vulcan. I have no intention of leaving, but if the bastards railroad me I want to make sure Spock has his medical bases covered. Be sure to read his file carefully, his physiology is unique.”

“I’ve read it. Actually marked a few items I wanted to ask you about.”

McCoy finished settling the rest of the warming blankets into place without turning around to look at them. M’Benga didn’t bat an eye. “I take it word gets around,” he said.

“Captain Kirk spoke to me about your situation earlier. He’s the one who suggested looking for you here.”

McCoy waited for M’Benga to clear out of the doorway to the storage closet before following him back into the office proper. “Have a seat. I’m just waiting for word from Admiral Maina about some testing Starfleet wants to run me through. They want me up here, I’d like to be planetside, it’s the usual bureaucratic song and dance. So. Spock’s medical file. What would you like to know?”

M’Benga took a seat at the table where the small computer screen was attached. “Mostly if there’s anything you haven’t put in his file that I need to know.”

“I’ll do what I can. Spock is as cagey as they come. I wouldn’t even know about the touch telepathy if it hadn’t been for the incident at the galactic barrier. I suspect there’s a hell of a lot more he’s not telling me. I did set up a secondary file for him last week to try to encourage him to be more forthcoming. He and I have the only password, but I’ll suggest he give it to you as well.”

“What do you know about healing trances?” M’Benga asked.

“That what it sounds like?”

“Pretty much. Vulcans can speed the healing process by placing themselves in a trance state. It can be difficult to get them to snap out of it, though. Traditionally, someone slaps them repeatedly. It can be surprising to walk in on.”

McCoy shook his head, though he wasn’t too surprised. “Hasn’t needed to do that on my watch. I keep a list of everything he’s accidentally poisoned himself with...mostly from back before my time when he was serving with Pike. There are a few things he can’t eat that Vulcans generally can.”

M’Benga paused to look briefly down into his clasped hands before looking up to ask the next question. “Is he bonded to the Captain? Ordinarily I’d consider that a private affair, but there are medical consequences. I won’t spread it around.”

McCoy chuckled. “Have you seen them together?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

McCoy sighed. “I know they’re mind linked, and in a different and more substantial way than I am with Spock. Professional necessity in our case, he’s really been a godsend, and I know how uncomfortable he is with all this.” He flipped a hand upward. “He’s better since the two of them...I don’t know if they’re sleeping with each other. If they aren’t, it’s only a matter of time, at least in my professional opinion.” 

“He’s 36 standard years old. One of us will have to broach the subject soon. Perhaps with Kirk?” M’Benga was clearly leaving out critical information as well.

“You’re slightly more likely to get a straight answer out of him than Spock. So, while you were checking out Spock’s file, you take a look at mine?”

M’Benga nodded, but didn’t comment.

“You going to have a problem serving with me?” M’Benga shook his head. “Wrong question. You going to have a problem telling me I’m wrong to my face and sticking to it?”

To his credit, M’Benga considered for long moments before answering. “Are you asking me if I’m afraid of you?”

“I guess I am.”

“Dr. McCoy, I worked on Vulcan. Sometimes my patients were too ill to be in control of their actions. I coped. The way I see it, if somebody three times stronger than me breaks my neck I’m exactly as dead as I am if someone a hundred times more powerful than me turns me into vapor. And the only time I’d worry about you is if you were lying on a biobed, not standing over one.”

“I can’t turn you into vapor,” McCoy said, then realized that might in fact be a lie. He’d never thought about trying to vaporize anything. Before McCoy’s mind was able to travel too far down the path of figuring out medical applications of vaporizing solid objects and exactly how one would safely dispose of biological vapor, his comm chimed at him. “McCoy here,” he said.

“Admiral Maina here, may I have visual?”

He turned the comm screen to face him. Lila Maina wore a traditional African headscarf in command gold to complement her uniform. It made her look even more formidable. “Screen on. So, Lila, am I getting my well deserved shore leave like a proper human Starfleet officer or have I become a piece of equipment whose feelings don’t matter?”

“Leonard, don’t be so dramatic,” Lila Maina chided. “You’re being sent to Ontario per your request. There will be a pair of Starfleet Ops officers…” Section 31, he translated, “Observing the testing. Is anyone from the Enterprise joining you?”

“The Captain, Spock, and Scotty when he can get a break from engine repairs.”

Maina laughed. “That Vulcan’s going to freeze his ass off in Ontario.”

“I was thinking about taking him ice fishing. Put some hair on his chest.”

M’Benga snorted, but forced the laugh down. Maina flicked her eyes to the left side of the screen, toward where M’Benga sat just outside the frame. “Who is that?”

“Geoff M’Benga. He’s replacing Helen Noel on the Enterprise.” He managed to get through the sentence without stumbling over her name this time. She’d been gone less time than she’d have missed had she been on leave, but it seemed like so much longer. He didn’t know if that was an effect of his speeded up brain or just the number of new things he had to worry about since then. She was a sweet kid, though her crush on the Captain had been a little concerning--he was sure half the crew had a crush on Kirk, including a fair number of crewmembers of both sexes who claimed to be otherwise uninterested in men--but he had needed to take her aside to remind her where flirting left off and harassment began. He turned the screen to make both of them visible to the admiral. “Thanks for going to bat for me, Lila.”

“There are some members of the Admiralty spinning lurid tales of you disappearing into the Canadian wilderness and emerging in a decade to take over Earth’s government and build a totalitarian regime,” Maina said. “Some of them figure it’s only a matter of time before you begin to see us as mice.”

“Never gonna happen. I like mice.” McCoy assured her. “Besides, I’m not cut out to run a planet. Way too much paperwork involved.”

It was Maina’s turn to stifle a laugh. “You’re expected to meet up with your minders within the hour. Do try not to be late. Maina out.”

McCoy collected his duffel from where he had tucked it in a corner of the office he had been temporarily assigned and shot a message to Tom and Kirk. M’Benga walked with him to the hub where the main banks of transporters were housed and took his leave there, saying he planned to use the time to become familiar with the Enterprise Sickbay.

He was met by a pair of officers in red. One was tall and reedy, with short dark hair and almond shaped eyes. He twitched nervously, then smiled without conviction when McCoy caught his eye. Maybe the folks at Thunder Bay would have some ideas for how he could tone down the glowing eye thing. It really disconcerted people, probably not so much because of the glow itself as because it made his pupils invisible and his eye movements impossible to track. 

The smaller officer, a woman with black hair pulled into a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck, regarded him with undisguised suspicion. Both she and the taller one had mental shields, a fact he could not have kept himself from noticing anymore than he could fail to notice their hair color. He wondered if they were “competent normals” like M’Benga or espers of some stripe themselves, but he cut short the speculation before his unconscious mind could go off on any fishing expeditions--not that he was sure anything inappropriate would happen, but he was sufficiently unsure of his own capabilities that he preferred to err on the side of caution.

“This way,” the female officer said. McCoy followed. “Starfleet Command has directed that you will remain in sight of at least one of us at all times, except while bathing and dressing within your cabin. I am Lieutenant Commander Kathleen Luna. This is Lieutenant Ban Imai.” She indicated the taller officer. “I assess security threats to the Federation from individuals. Lieutenant Imai is a staff psychologist in the threat assessment department. You will be expected to cooperate with our directives at all times. Is that clear, Doctor McCoy?”

“Clear enough.” Some shore leave this was going to be. He was definitely going ice fishing now just to torment these two. “But this is my shore leave, on top of anything else. I’m not planning my recreational activities around your convenience.” He turned and walked away from them toward the transporter pad, the coordinates Tom had given him to the cabins scribbled on a scrap of paper tucked into his pocket.

He handed the paper to the transporter tech with a grin. The tech glanced at it. “Just in time for bow hunting season,” he remarked, cheerfully.

“Just hunting with my camera,” McCoy replied, stepping onto the pad. His security detail followed, looking like they were going to be just as good company as he might expect, though there might be hope for Imai.

Spock and the Captain were almost to the hub. He turned in the direction of the corner they were about to come around. They rounded it together, Kirk dressed in jeans, green flannel shirt and bomber jacket, Spock all in black except for the white coat from his ‘fleet cold weather gear. They walked in step, unconsciously mirroring each other’s movements.

“Scotty coming?” he asked.

“He’s getting his kit together,” Kirk confirmed. “I told him he wasn’t skipping a chance for an Earth shore leave.

“Captain, Commander Spock, this is Lieutenant Commander Luna and Lieutenant Imai. My shadows. Luna, Imai, this is Captain James Kirk, First Officer Spock.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Luna said, shaking Kirk’s hand. “So we are all on the same page, McCoy is not to be unattended at any time. He is currently classified as a categorical threat under house arrest at the Herald Foundation facility. If he fails to comply with directions, he will be returned to the Starbase immediately. If you assist in any attempts to leave our custody, you will face court martial.”

Kirk’s body immediately tensed, while Spock, beside and just slightly behind him shifted his hands and feet so he was at parade rest, a move that could be construed as either acknowledging their authority or as protective of Kirk and McCoy. The ambiguity was not lost on his minders.

Kirk nodded curtly. “Understood.”

Luna was clearly unconvinced, but said nothing more about it. Imai had faded into social invisibility, the proverbial fly on the wall, watching the three...no, all four of them without comment.

“Let’s go. Tom will be waiting,” McCoy prompted.

The five of them arranged themselves on the transporter pads. “I still hate these things,” McCoy said to no one in particular, then dissolved into tiny fragments for the ride down to Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm playing M'Benga up as supremely unflappable to contrast with McCoy's flappability.
> 
> Comments always welcome.


	3. The Herald Foundation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy undergoes testing of his abilities at the Herald Foundation properties, while Commander Luna makes veiled threats.

McCoy reminded himself again, just as his thoughts alit on that strangely slick surface mid-transport, to ask Scott whether there was some physical event he might be experiencing that corresponded to his peculiar subjective experience. He felt that he could hang suspended in that odd, smooth, golden space for subjective hours, then shift his attention back down into the matter stream and emerge into his solidifying self exactly as though he had never paused. It was, to put it mildly, eerie.

His eyes reconstituted themselves, and he found himself looking into the nose of a moose. The moose sniffed his face, then blew a sprinkle of moose snot across his cheeks and turned its attention to Spock, upon whom it bestowed an enthusiastically damp snuffle to the hollow between neck and shoulder.

“Go on, Eddie, take off!” An amiably annoyed voice said from somewhere behind the moose. Blonde, bearded Tom Schoenbein gave the animal a firm slap on the rear and it chuffed at him and sauntered away from the group. “He was hoping you had apples for him. They like apples nearly as much as horses do, once they get a taste for them.” He surveyed the group of them, taking a moment to pause and nod acknowledgement at McCoy. “I’m Tom, by the way,” he said to Kirk with another half-nod, half bow, offered in lieu of the usual handshake. 

The Captain handled the introductions for the group. “I’m Captain James Kirk, this is my first officer, Spock, and I believe you know Dr. McCoy.” He turned to indicate the officers flanking McCoy. “Commander Kathleen Luna and Lieutenant Ban Imai.” As he finished speaking, the musical shimmer of the transporter deposited Scotty behind them. Kirk turned to confirm the identity of the new arrival with a glance, then said, “Montgomery Scott, our Chief Engineer.”

Tom did a quick finger pointing head count, then said, “Cabins have four bedrooms, two bunks per room. You might want to work out who’s sharing on the walk over.”

Luna stepped briskly forward to displace Kirk at Tom’s side. “Once our belongings are stowed, we will proceed to the testing facility immediately,” she said. “Captain Kirk and Commanders Spock and Scott are free to pursue whatever leisure activities interest them, but we have business to attend to.”

“We will be accompanying the doctor,” Spock informed them.

“Your presence will not be required,” Luna returned.

Tom turned around to face them all, walking backwards up the trail for a few steps. “All right, folks, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna settle you all into the cabin, and then we’re all gonna walk over to the infirmary at the school.” Funny how his shields flashed forest green as if to emphasize his words, adding a sort of authoritative push. He wondered if the older man did that on purpose. “You are my guests here and I expect you to behave,” Tom said, directing the last to Luna.

“Commander Luna, you’ll want your own room, I’m sure,” Kirk noted.

“And your rank entitles you to the other,” she said.

“I was going to offer the other to Dr McCoy. He has been finding it difficult to sleep in close quarters.”

“Unacceptable,” Luna pronounced. “The doctor will be bunking with Lieutenant Imai.” 

Tom cleared his throat. “In my medical opinion, it would be in Dr. McCoy’s best interest to occupy his own room.” At Luna’s sour frown, he added, “Even if he were a prisoner, he would be entitled his own space in which to sleep, especially under the circumstances.”

McCoy scoffed impatiently. “Ma’am, with all due respect, if I really wanted to slip off into the woods to become some kind of Abominable Snowman, the Lieutenant would be no hindrance.”

Tom stopped in front of a cabin and palmed open the door. The interior of the cabin was cavernous in size, but welcoming, finished in real wood stained a warm honey color. There were enough couches and chairs for at least a dozen people in the large sitting room, all arranged around a large fireplace set into the back wall. One side of the room boasted an open plan kitchen with a large dining table and chairs.

The captain surveyed the room’s occupants, obviously growing impatient with the bickering. “Mr. Spock and I will share one room. We have done so on diplomatic missions in the past and know each other’s habits. Commander Scott and Lt. Imai will share the other room on this side of the common room, and the two rooms on the other side will be occupied by Commander Luna and Dr. McCoy.” He did not say, “Is that acceptable to everyone?” Command hath its privileges, and it was becoming clear that Kirk needed to remind Luna that he outranked her.

McCoy retired to his room. He changed into jeans and a long sleeved shirt in cream colored flannel--outdoor styles reached a sort of ergonomic optimum in the mid twentieth century and hadn’t changed much since. His uniform boots were well broken in and suited to casual tromping about in the snow, so they would do. He pushed his suitcase under the bed despite an abundance of drawers. It had never been his habit to put things away when he traveled. Luna moved around the room that shared a wall with his, a pale orangey-gold ghost visible through the rustic pine board walls, worrying at some problem while unpacking her...stop that, he told himself to curb the near-involuntary voyeurism.

He returned to the common room to find Scotty regaling Tom with some explosive tale, probably exaggerated given the expansive gesturing. He took a seat across from the two. Scotty grinned. “And he’s not bad, you know. Hardly breaks anything.”

“Those capacitors were radiation damaged. I did you a favor,” McCoy protested.

“Likely story,” Scotty said, grinning. “So, here I am trying to translate ‘the swirly thing looks like it’s swirling wrong’ and that’s when I threw the manual at him and told him to come back when he knew the proper terminology.”

He found himself appreciating Scotty’s enthusiastic pragmatism more and more lately--he really had spent an inordinate amount of his off time in engineering the first week, cross training and enjoying it more than he’d expected. Warp fields were a lot more interesting when he could actually see the energies twisting through the warp core, and he had to admit taking a little guilty pleasure at Scotty’s delight in being permitted to see them too, if only secondhand. Spock would likely Not Approve. “Scotty,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Something strange happens to me in the transporter. It feels like I land on something during transport. My mind, not my body. Like I stick to it until the transport is almost complete, then I snap into my body. It’s disconcerting.”

“Does that happen to you too?” Scotty asked Tom, who shook his head.

“What’s it like?”

“Hmm,” McCoy said, calling up the memory. “Catch?”

“Aye,” Scotty replied, meeting McCoy’s eyes for just the moment it took for McCoy to pass the experience as accurately as possible to Scotty, who blinked, puzzled, and said nothing for several seconds. “I suppose,” he said, thoughtfully, “that could be the analog capture crystal in the Heisenberg compensator. Vulcans call it a cat-raccoon, or something. They invented the thing. All I know is if it’s damaged or miscalibrated, strange things happen to people in transport.”

Spock and Kirk entered as a pair, unconsciously mirroring each other’s movements. Luna, emerging from her room at the same time, favored them with a calculating eye.

“We’re all here then,” Tom said. “Let me be clear. You are on Herald Foundation property.” He turned particularly to Luna. “We are not a branch of Starfleet Intelligence. We are foremost an education and advocacy group for people whose esper abilities are atypical for species, like Dr. McCoy and myself, and incidentally Mr. Spock, given his status as a hybrid. Any attempt to remove Dr. McCoy from these premises against his wishes or to threaten him in any way will be considered a crime under both Earth and Canadian law.”

Luna replied, “Let me be clear. As a Starfleet officer, Dr. McCoy has made commitments to the Federation that supersede his right to personal autonomy.”

McCoy supposed it was good that the battle lines had been drawn openly, in front of his superior officers. It was still deeply disconcerting to be fought over like a prize. No, that was not right. Luna might think of him as a prize, but he was absolutely certain Kirk and Spock did not.

They left, following Tom. The group of them drew more than a few stares. They passed a playground where an upside down girl of about eight flipped herself upright and ran toward them, squealing, followed by a small pack of companions. 

The girl stopped in front of Kirk, hands laced tightly behind her back, but body leaning forward. “Are you a Starship Captain? A real one with a ship and everything? Is it a big ship? I’m going to be the captain of a starship someday and we’re going to meet lots of aliens and we’ll all be best friends!”

When she paused to take a breath, Kirk said, “I am a starship captain. This is my first officer Mr. Spock, and this is my Chief Medical officer, Dr. McCoy, and my Chief Engineer, Mr. Scott.”

“How come you’re all boys except for her?” She pointed at Luna.

Spock fielded that one, fortunately. “There are many ships in Starfleet, with many crews. Gender is not taken into account, at least officially, when assigning senior staff, which means at times there will be more men than women or others serving, and vice versa.”

“Oh,” she said, in a tone that clearly indicated she did not understand.

Spock continued. “The senior crew members on the Discovery, for example, are predominantly female. In fact, if you have a datapad with you…”

The girl ran back to a bench and returned with a pad covered in stickers. Spock took it. “I am providing you with the contact information for a senior officer of my acquaintance on Discovery who I believe would be amenable to corresponding with you when she has the time.” He passed the datapad back to the girl.

“You know Michael Burnham!” she said, incredulous.

“She is my sister.”

“She’s not Vulcan,” the little girl chirped.

“She is adopted.”

The awestruck looks on the faces of the several children surrounding them explained why Spock did not often mention his relationship with the mutineer turned heroine.

After explaining to the assembled group that they really did need to be moving along now, Tom led them to a larger log building with a steeply pitched roof, still trailing curious children. Even after they were inside, they didn’t manage to shake the little girl.

 

The first half of the testing had in fact been dull, at least for McCoy. Tests to determine how much he could dead lift in Earth gravity, a couple of tons it turned out. Tests to see how small an object he could manipulate. DNA he could break, but not reanneal, he could move amino acids around, but he couldn’t reliably tell them apart so what would be the point, and both those feats he had to do one molecule at a time, which was pretty useless. The little girl, who turned out to be Tom’s granddaughter Annika, lightened the mood with suitably impressed squealing and requests to look through all the microscopes. 

They tested his biocontrols, again boring, but not entirely useless. No one had a clue how to test the erratic precognition that mostly took the form of ghostly objects in his immediate environment. McCoy knew Tom was saving the telepathy testing for last in hopes of easing McCoy into the scary stuff--he didn’t know whether to be grateful or mortified that at one of those conferences they had attended he’d gotten into the bourbon and told the guy just exactly how much telepaths scared the crap out of him...and Tom had just laughed it off like it was no big deal that otherwise decent people treated him like some kind of monstrosity. It was a good thing Tom thought of him as otherwise decent people. 

“Okay, one last batch of tests and we’re done for the day,” Tom said, while Imai behind him checked the perimeter, making note of every figure that they passed on the way to Tom’s office, where the specific tests of McCoy’s telepathy would be accomplished. Luna mostly just watched McCoy intensely. It made the back of his neck itch, her attention pulling at his brain and making it harder for him to shield. 

They stopped outside the door, an improbably large gaggle of officers. “I’m afraid I’m going to need most of you to wait elsewhere. Annika, could you show the captain and the rest of the Starfleet officers to the cafeteria?”

“Lieutenant Imai and I will observe,” Luna said.

“No, you will not. I was selected to run these tests and I have the full confidence of Starfleet that I am sufficiently competent and impartial to do so.”

“McCoy is to remain under guard at all times unless and until he is officially cleared for regular duty. On this my orders are clear,” Luna repeated firmly. Tom gestured her into his office with a tight smile that managed to convey a scowl. McCoy followed.

The office was large enough that each of them could take a seat without any of them crowding together. Tom claimed the high backed leather chair that dominated the space. Luna elected to stand near the door in the standard military “at ease” position, which was of course anything but. McCoy took the couch, leaning over the arm nearest Tom as though he were more relaxed than he was. Imai was stopped from taking a seat by a sharp head shake from Luna and so stood rocking back and forth, heel to toe until a second sharp look from Luna stopped him.

“All right, so we’re getting a general field strength here. That can be assessed by the Penrose field detector on my desk. We’ll have to test range, bandwidth, and resolution empirically.   
Dr. McCoy, mind putting on the silly hat?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” McCoy said, relieved. He pulled the stocking cap-like sensor array on and waited while Tom adjusted a couple of dials.

“This won’t be accurate if you’re shielded.”

McCoy looked over at Imai and Luna. “I don’t think it’s a great idea to drop them in here with those two.”

“Something to hide, Doctor?” Luna said.

Tom turned to Luna. “Maybe he’s concerned that you do. Look, it’s obvious just looking at him that his esper rating is higher than that of any other person I have ever met. He’s been doing a damn good job keeping it together for as long as he has, but leaving aside privacy, neither of us can vouch for your safety if you stick around.”

“How much distance do you need?” he added, to McCoy.

“Three meters, maybe?” McCoy guessed.

“I’d give him four. So you two just walk right out that door and train your phasers on it if you have to. Just keep in mind that this place is full of kids.”

“Aren’t you worried about your own safety?” Luna challenged.

Tom grinned“I do this shit for a living. Now go.”

The two of them left and, judging from their auras retreating through the door, they gave him the four meters. Tom stood, walked around the couch, and picked something small and electronic feeling off the back, then pinched it until it crushed with a little snap. “She planted a bug. All right, so first, let’s get a number. Shields down when I say go, try to drift, don’t focus your attention anywhere in particular and let me look after myself. All we’re doing is letting the detector get a value. Okay, go.”

McCoy followed instructions to the extent he could. His shields didn’t just dim the flow of information from the minds around him, but from the physical world as well. Letting go of them meant allowing himself to dissolve into his surroundings, everything around him growing semitransparent. He could see/hear/feel the blood flowing through Tom’s arteries and veins, the internal structure of the couch on which he sat, the chemical composition of the soil beneath the building’s foundation and the numerous invertebrates waiting out the winter within it.

Tom’s entire body sparked with the signals running down axons and dendrites, a perpetually exploding star shining with meaning and intention, only now, perhaps a half second into this exercise, registering surprise, a frisson of not quite panic, and a will to stillness that McCoy tried to reflect back. His own mind resisted stillness. As his perception of time had changed, his overclocked brain was often frustrated by the slow responses of his organic body. 

Tom counted seconds, focusing hard on the numbers so that their names shouted into his mind and their shapes filled his other sight. Two, three, four, five. All right, I’ve got the data I need. McCoy pulled back inside himself again. “Well,” he said, “This device gives me precise results up to six hundred on the Rhine-Johannsen scale. It’s given me an overtop notice and an estimate at six-seventy, give or take fifty points.”

“Which means I have a number to stick in my personnel file.”

“Yah. That’s about it.” He sat back down. “So how are you holding up?”

McCoy pulled off Tom’s “silly hat” and scrubbed at his hair, mussing it more than the cap already had. “Like hell,” he admitted. “I mean, I don’t just have these new powers...new senses. I don’t think quite like I used to. I’ve never been a patient man, and it feels like the world is running in slow motion. It’s not that I value anyone less than before, but I know I’ve gotten impatient with the Captain and Christine and other people I work with...and I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt their feelings anymore.”

Tom sat back, pulled at his beard. “Well, I have to admit I’ve never seen anything like you.”

McCoy met Tom’s eyes for the scant second he dared. “I know. I scared you, and that scares me more than anything else so far.”

“That Vulcan friend of yours is a brave man.”

“He’s not my…” McCoy started to protest. “Nah, that’s not fair. He’s been a hell of a friend, more than I had a right to expect from him.” Luna and Imai were returning. “We’re out of time,” McCoy said.

“So I see,” Tom confirmed. “We’ll get the other variables later.”

In the moment in which his attention was turned to the pair approaching the door, he could hear Luna’s voice. “...loyalty is to Starfleet, not to these people. Is that clear?”

Imai didn’t answer aloud, but his irritated assent registered plainly even through the door.

Luna entered without bothering to knock. “You’ve had enough time to run your tests,” she said. She invited herself back into the room, followed by Imai, who took a post just inside the door. “All right, results.”

“I’m getting mid six hundreds. Scoring accuracy is a little rough at those values, but reliable enough.” Tom sent the information to Luna’s data pad. “I’m going to suggest he go through the medical telepath licensure program we’ve set up here, should take a couple of weeks since he’s already a medical doctor and a quick study, then I’d be happy to certify him to return to work full time on the Enterprise.”

Luna frowned. “I will report your findings to Starfleet Command with my recommendations. Lieutenant Imai, you will accompany Dr. McCoy for the rest of the day. I have other commitments.” She turned on her heel and left.

Imai collapsed into a chair as soon as the door shut behind Luna. “Some days I hate my job,” he said.

“Only some days, Ban?” Tom said.

“Yeah, actually. Most of my job is actually...I mean, I can’t get into the details, a lot of Starfleet Intelligence is classified by definition, but my work is necessary, and challenging, and most of the people I work with aren’t like Commander Luna. She’s...there’s a reason she spends most of her time behind a desk.”

“Well,” McCoy said, somewhat surprised that Ban Imai and Tom knew each other and he hadn’t noticed. “I don’t actually have any interest in ice fishing. Or hunting. What else have you got around here?”

“Cross country skiing?” Tom suggested.

McCoy sighed. “Got a fake cast I can put on my leg so I can lie in front of a fire with a hot toddy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	4. Snowshoeing and ice fishing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy goes showshoeing with Scotty, and gets some bad news from Spock and Kirk.

“I hear the falls are spectacular,” Scotty said.

McCoy had insisted on being planetside, insisted that he had earned his shore leave, and here he was, brain the size of a planet, too preoccupied to decide what he’d like to do. He stood in the doorway to the equipment shed, a pleasant, homey building that served as a place to check out snowshoes, skis, and snowboards, but also had central heat, a sitting area and dispensers for cocoa, coffee and teas, including Vulcan spice tea. He’d mention that to Spock when he saw him next.

“Snowshoes,” Scotty said, jogging up behind him. “I haven’t done that before. What do you say?”

McCoy turned around. Scott’s posture, as usual, was half intentional pose, his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his jeans, a calculated grin on his face. McCoy let himself be jollied out of his reverie. “Walking around in snowshoes? That might be about my speed for today.”

Lieutenant Imai set down his coffee. McCoy belayed him with a gesture and he sat back to wait. The cheerful teenaged girl behind the counter chirped, “There’s a foot of fresh powder on the trail leading to the falls. Just so you know, the weather may turn around sunset.”

“Thank you, young lady,” Scott said.

“The falls glitter like diamonds when the light hits the ice. It’s worth the walk.” She eyed Scott critically. “There’s a hoverbus that stops all along the route, in case you get tired.”

Scott made a show of scoffing at her tone. “I am in peak physical condition, I’ll have you know.”

The girl turned her attention to McCoy, smile widening to crinkle her eyes. “Nice shades.” 

Now what would a teenaged girl want with an old man like him? Oh, right. “I’m old enough to be your father,” he told her.

“You don’t look it.” She leaned forward over the counter, balancing on her elbows.

McCoy flipped up his mirror shades so his glowing eyes showed.

The girl, whose name tag declared her to be Alyssa, started back with a grin. “That is so punk! What species are you?” 

Seriously? He sat down next to Scotty to lace his feet into the snowshoes. “I’m human. Just had an accident a while back.” 

“Oh no, I’m so sorry, can you still see?” She handed a third pair of snowshoes to Imai, who buried his spluttering smirk behind his hand.

McCoy choked on a laugh. “Yeah, I can see just fine. More than fine. I just look like an eldritch abomination.”

Scotty chuckled over his own laces. “You don’t want an old space dog like Bones. All he does is complain.”

“Cut me to the bone, why don’t you?” McCoy returned. He stood. Walking in the snowshoes was awkward, made him feel like a giant duck. He duck walked to the door, Scotty behind him, into the noonday sun.

Walking in snowshoes was, to borrow a word from Spock, fascinating. Fresh powder that shouldn’t have borne their weight settled only a couple of centimeters under the teardrop shaped mesh panels, squeaking faintly with each step. He made an effort, early on, to appreciate the contrast of rich green pine boughs against pristine white snow and clear blue sky, but his squeaking shoes kept drawing his attention down into the tiny, intricate world of individual snowflakes in haphazard stacks, each a tiny hexagonal artwork, some paneled like stained glass, others made of fluffy needles that resembled the pine boughs on microscopic scale. Once in a while, the energy of the sun would reach a critical threshold and an individual flake would change, slowly, from ice to water.

“Look, an owl was here.” Scott breathed. McCoy and Imai followed his gaze to where a parallel line of divots in the snow ended abruptly in a perfect semicircle of feather prints. Scott pointed his tricorder at it--not scanning, just taking a picture. 

McCoy noted, “A lot more wildlife around than you might expect this time of year. It’s just mostly underground.” He cast his other senses around him, counted dozens of rodents under the snow, then an ermine slinking just at the treeline, stalking a rabbit that sat perfectly still in hopes it had not yet been seen.

 _Show you something?_ McCoy said, subvocal so as not to startle the animals. Scott assented. McCoy directed his attention toward the unfolding drama still invisible to the human eye, so that they were both watching when the ermine shot after the rabbit. The two slalomed across the small clearing, coming within a few meters of the three of them, sending up clouds of fine snow when they slid into their turns.

This time the rabbit escaped, and the ermine, disappointed, slunk back into the tangle of brown vegetation beneath the pines. McCoy breathed a sigh of relief, having gotten caught up in the chase, drawn especially to the rabbit’s desperate fear. He had resisted the temptation to interfere on behalf of the little thing, ermines having as much right to live as rabbits, but he realized late in the chase that death was not something he wanted to experience casually. He knew he would in the line of duty, and he would accept the need when the time came--but not without a fight.

“You all right, Len?” Scott asked.

McCoy found he had placed his hand over his racing heart. He slowed his heart rate deliberately, then turned to make his way up the trail toward the falls. There were few tourists here on a weekday afternoon in winter, after the holiday rush. That was just fine with him. Scott and Imai kept up beside him, Imai trying to be as unobtrustive as a guard could be. “When the water’s flowing, the cabins all get their power from a hydroelectric system built right into the rock, so it doesn’t disturb the wildlife,” Scott said. “Invisible technology.”

As they came up on the falls, McCoy poked around the hollowed out places where the turbines nestled, still for the winter. It would take him some time to puzzle out what all of the machinery in there did. “They sell schematics at the gift shop?”

“No. I checked.”

“Sure you could get one if you asked.”

“Think you could get me a tour?” 

McCoy considered. “If you mean could I ask the folks running the place if you could crawl about down there I’d be happy to. If you think I’m going to sneak you in the answer is no. I am on my best behavior for this trip.”

“Pity.”

The snow gave way to boardwalk. McCoy clumped over it, snowshoes slapping, until he found a convenient bench, then unlaced the shoes and tucked them under one arm. It wasn’t far into afternoon, but the sun, low in the sky at this latitude, cast a patina of early evening gold over the sculpted ice of the falls.

“Wonder what the captain and Spock are up to,” Scott mused idly.

McCoy sighed. “Snowboarding. But they’re meeting us here, provided Jim doesn’t break his fool neck first. Mind if I try something silly?”

“Be my guest.”

McCoy climbed up onto the railing to stand, nothing between himself and a thirty meter drop that still frightened him, irrational though his fear was. Imai stepped closer as if to grab him, but backed off after a moment.

“You going to jump?” Scotty asked. He leaned over the rail to get a better look at the drop.

McCoy turned at the alarmed startle several meters behind him. A spindly red headed man in a brown uniform turned directly toward him. “Hey, uh, sir. What are you doing up there?”

The ranger didn’t approach right away, but slowly raised his comlink to his mouth. “Might have a jumper over here,” he said, too quietly for normal ears to pick up at that distance.

McCoy was tempted just to step off the railing and hover over the falls as he had intended before the ranger interfered, but he didn’t want to give the ranger a heart attack. His overactive brain went off and scanned the poor fellow’s chest cavity to report back that he was in excellent cardiac health, really, but that wasn’t the point. McCoy stepped off over the boardwalk instead, but settled slowly down, rather than falling at a normal rate. “I thought I’d fly out over the falls to take a closer look, if that’s all right?”

The ranger twisted his lips in thought. “You got paperwork on that portable antigrav unit? I can’t let you hover over a drop like that without knowing your equipment is in good repair.”

“It’s integral antigrav,” McCoy said. “Telekinesis. I can lift about a ton with good control. Twice that, sloppily. I won’t fall.”

Scotty confirmed his assertion for the ranger. “He’s supposed to practice.”

“One of those Lakehead extension folks, eh?” The ranger took a seat on the bench to look out over the falls. “Fine. Your funeral.” Imai took a seat beside the ranger, stuck out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles, amused.

Scotty quirked an eyebrow in a fair imitation of Spock. “A ton, Len? Y’know, I’d appreciate the view, too.”

“I should have just rented a flitter.” McCoy held out an elbow, mock chivalrous. “Before I change my mind, Lois Lane.”

Scott rolled his eyes, skipped, God, skipped over to McCoy and took hold of his arm. “Ready when you are, Clark.”

“Watch it or I’ll drop you.”

He lifted the two of them into the air and out over the falls. The view really was magnificent without the obstruction of seats and railings. He didn’t need to hold onto Scotty to bring him out with him, but it just felt more secure having him where he wasn’t going to drift off somewhere.   
He let the two of them drop below the cliff face and down along the craggy, ropy surface of the frozen waterfall. Even out of the wind, it was bitterly cold. Scotty, beside him, shivered. McCoy took a moment to warm the air around them until Scott’s teeth stopped chattering enough that he could speak.

“I bet we could sneak in behind the falls to look at that hydroelectric mechanism,” Scott suggested.

“We are being watched,” McCoy countered.

“Like they could stop us.” Scotty tugged on his elbow as though to steer him toward the side of the falls, where there might be an opening into the machinery filled space behind. He was like a train obsessed child sometimes.

“Construction vehicles,” Scott said, apropos of nothing.

“What?”

“It was construction vehicles, not trains. When I was a lad. I used to pester my folks to take me out to the biggest projects.”

“Did I say that aloud?”

Scott shrugged. “Probably not. You chatter a lot. My favorites were the big cranes on tracks...and the cargo transporters.”

“Hey!”

Scotty turned around at the sound. McCoy noted the presence of Jim and Spock above them, leaning on the railing. Their relaxed posture belied the sense of urgency in their minds. Dammit, his shields were sloppy. Sigh. It hardly mattered anymore with Scotty, who seemed to pick up McCoy’s thoughts with alarming regularity lately. Might have to talk to him about that. The feeling he got was that they were rapidly settling into a relationship that was as close as a romance, while not exactly being romantic. 

“Like twins,” Scotty supplied a little disconcertingly. 

McCoy thought briefly about bringing Jim and Spock down to where he and Scotty were admiring the falls, but although he knew, objectively, that he could carry all four of them, he didn’t want to take the risk. “We’ll meet you up there.” He pulled Scotty along with him back to the boardwalk, ignoring his petulant protests.

Spock wasted no time. “It is imperative that we speak privately, as soon as possible,” he said.

McCoy looked pointedly at Imai.

Spock reiterated, “It is imperative that we speak as privately as may be arranged as soon as possible.”

Imai flinched that time, then squared his shoulders. “I am required to chaperone Dr. McCoy at all times.”

“We are aware, Lieutenant, and understand the perceived necessity of doing so. However, we must discuss certain personal matters of a sensitive nature and are uncertain of your discretion.” Spock’s tone was neutral, almost apologetic.

Imai didn’t react much, visibly, but McCoy noted his increased heart rate, the rising tension in the muscles of his legs and arms, and the tightening of his shields. If McCoy intended to incapacitate him and redact his memory, Imai would be helpless to stop him and he knew it, and the young Intelligence officer didn’t know McCoy as well as the others, or at least, as well as Jim did, so had ample reason to be afraid.

McCoy disliked that reaction more than any other consequence of his recent transformation. Worse, he realized that, depending upon what Jim and Spock had to tell him, he might even have to consider...no. There were lines he was not going to cross. He would not allow himself to turn into Gary Mitchell, and to take even one step down that road, especially now when the changes is his mind and body were so new to him would be a moral hazard he didn’t trust himself to breach. 

“Lieutenant Imai, may I assume that any of our discussions will be reported to Commander Luna?” he asked, to get some sunlight on the issue.

“I have a small amount of discretion. Her orders are to prevent if possible, and report any attempts to evade supervision and to report any conversations relevant to your appropriateness for starship duty.” He paused to lick his lips. “Any discussion concerning the Captain and First Officer are not relevant in my opinion.”

“In that case,” McCoy said, “Let’s all go ice fishing.” 

*

McCoy shared a golf cart with Scotty and Imai for the drive out to the ice fishing hut, a little blue blister on the frozen lake. There were two other blisters within sight of theirs, neither one occupied according to the brochure, which stated that an occupied fishing hole should be indicated by raising the bright orange flag, for safety reasons. Alyssa, the chipper teenager at the equipment shed, had also informed them that the fishing huts were used for romantic excursions a lot more often than for fishing, given the relatively small number of fish renters brought back to declare and the disheveled state in which some of the renters returned their keys.

For his own part, McCoy found himself verifying the depth of the ice cover, noting a couple of long cracks, tightly held closed by late freezing ice. There was a spot where upwelling water took the ice cover down to close to the safe limit, and the wind had shifted over the last half hour so that it was blowing a little harder, a little damper and a little more southwest than due west. They pulled up next to the hut, Spock and Jim parking neatly alongside them.

Spock wasn’t letting any trace of his distress show on his face and was shielding hard. Jim, on the other hand, was a knot of tight chested anxiety he was making a credible effort not to show on the outside, though even had he not been practically drowning in it, the slight squaring of Jim’s jaw was a tell McCoy had known the man long enough to discern. They settled into the circle of chairs around the capped hole in the ice, no one bothering to remove the cap. McCoy said, “So how private a conversation are we talking about here?”

Spock’s shoulders dropped slightly. “The Captain and I must discuss a threat which was made by Commander Luna and what, if anything, can be done to neutralize it.”

“What did she say?” Scott said, leaning forward.

Imai shrunk into his chair, looking like he wanted to become invisible. McCoy considered and rejected half a dozen reassuring things he could say. In the absence of any real trust between them, they all seemed ominous and insincere. He held his tongue.

“She accused the captain and myself of being in a clandestine romantic relationship, and threatened to have me reassigned unless the captain agreed to transfer Doctor McCoy to Starfleet Intelligence.”

McCoy turned to Scotty. “Has their relationship been, in any sense of the word, clandestine?”

Scotty rolled his eyes. “Well, I know Mr. Spock is not exactly the demonstrative type, but the Captain spends half his shift making doe eyes at him, and they were holding hands in the mess. If anyone on the ship doesn’t know they’re a couple, they’re not observant enough to serve on a starship.”

At Spock’s raised eyebrow, Scotty shrugged. “I’m just sayin’ you two are a little obvious.”

Imai raised a hesitant hand. “It took me at least...three minutes to be sure.”

“Well I guess that’s something,” Jim said. “But the point is reassignment, for any of us, is a credible threat.”

“Why? You’re close enough in rank that you’re not breaking any regulations.”

Spock steepled his hands to explain. “She plans to argue that the relationship, which began shortly after your transformation, has impaired our mutual judgement by rendering us too sentimental to part with a crewman who has become a clear hazard to the safety of the ship.”

McCoy “I’m not the one sleeping...in a relationship...with one of the two of you. How does she reckon that?”

“Simple logic. If we were not impaired, we would agree with her. As we disagree, we must be impaired.”

“Sounds like she’s been spending too much time around admirals,” Scotty noted.

McCoy closed his eyes and rubbed at a dawning headache. He took a moment to adjust the vasculature of his scalp, then thinned his shields so he could get a better look at his commanding officers. Their minds, translated into a convenient visual image, flared pale gold and orangey red around them, and sitting next to each other as they were, twined in complex patterns around each other. Separating the two of them at this stage, before whatever connected them had stabilized...as their physician he certainly couldn’t recommend it. “I’ll go,” he said.

“Unacceptable.” Spock leaned slightly closer to Jim so that they presented a united front.

McCoy shook his head. “I can’t be responsible for what might happen to your mental health if you’re separated right now. Intelligence wants me. Section 31 wants me, and they know enough about me to know what buttons to push.”

Jim looked from Spock, to McCoy, and back to Spock. “Marry me,” he said.

“I’m not going to marry you!” McCoy snapped.

“Not you,” Jim corrected. “You. Spock. Marry me. It won’t be as easy to separate us then.”

Spock demurred. “If we were to marry, it would provide Luna with further evidence that we are unfit for starship duty. That our decisions are based in the nature of our relationship.”

“Well, maybe they are!” 

McCoy thought for a fraction of a second. “If you two get married, they’ll ground you, take me off wherever they like, and we won’t be much better off than before. We need a solution that keeps the two of you together on Enterprise.” Jim was almost as much in love with that hunk of metal as he was with the Vulcan. 

Jim turned to Spock. “I still want you to marry me.”

Spock’s gaze rested on Jim for two seconds. “As you wish.” He turned back to McCoy. “We will continue to work on the problem while you are here. There must be a solution.”

If there were a solution, he would have thought of one by now. Wouldn’t he?

“Ban, Luna’s goal is to have me transferred to Section 31,” McCoy began.

“Starfleet Intelligence,” Ban Imai corrected.

“Don’t be coy. We both know where she’s from and where she wants me. But what do the brass above her want?”

Imai was silent for a good long while. “They want you watched, and they don’t want you wasted.” 

A massive gust of wind slammed against the side of the hut, hard enough that the lightweight structure slid thirty two centimeters to the east, then squealed as its moorings strained against further movement. “What time is it?” McCoy asked.

“1630 hours.”

“Check the local area for weather systems,” Jim said. Scotty pulled out the tricorder he’d been using as a camera, while McCoy cast his attention outward and to the southwest, where wind whipped heavy snow, and ionic charges built and released between the clouds and the ground. Thundersnow. 

“Didn’t that girl, Alyssa, say there was a storm coming in this evening?” Scott said. “I should have remembered when you suggested we go out on the lake.” He consulted the tricorder readings. “Looks like barometric pressure is dropping quickly just to the west of us.”

“Explosive cyclogenesis?” Jim said, sounding more excited than worried, of course.

The hut jerked again under a gust of wind, moorings squealing as they pulled out of the ice. McCoy wrestled the lightweight shell back into place against the lifting force of the wind, already pulling against him with enough strength to make holding it an effort. Snow blew in underneath, across their feet, and with it, the warmth in the small space fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? This fic is not abandoned? The novel ate my brain for a bit. I'm back to finish this bit.


	5. Compromises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy makes a decision that causes him to doubt himself, and Kirk and Spock reach a compromise with Starfleet Intelligence, or possibly Section 31, that all three hope they don't live to regret.

Gusts of wind blew stinging snow under the edge of the blue plastic eggshell that covered the ice fishing hole. Jim and Imai leapt to their feet first, searching the surface for any handles or knobs on the interior surface that could be used as handholds. Spock and Scotty stood, but their eyes roved over the contents of the ice fishing shed for anything that might be useful in aiding their situation. McCoy, for his part, concentrated on holding the eggshell down while thinking through their situation. The barometric pressure was low and dropping fast, there was enough snow coming down to blind everyone except him, and they were a five minute flitter ride from the cabins, which translated to a good hour hike in good conditions. Barely discernable over the whistling of the wind across the ice, McCoy heard a crash, followed by a diminishing scree. He pushed his mind outward to confirm his suspicions, then shouted, “That was the golf carts.”

Kirk acknowledged him with a nod, his lips pressed into a tight line. His arms were over his head, hanging onto a hook intended for hanging up gear. His gaze rested briefly on each of them before he shouted over the wind, “We need to make for more substantial shelter.”

Scotty and Spock, instead of holding down their cover, had devoted their time to collecting useful objects inside the shelter. Spock had a coil of rope over one shoulder and a stuffed bag in one hand. Scotty had secured their bag of drinks and snacks around his own shoulder and was holding a couple of thick metal spikes tucked under one arm. The wind dropped off for a moment, causing Scotty’s voice to sound abnormally loud when he spoke. “The shore comes up pretty steep about forty meters east-northeast of our position.”

Another gust lifted one edge of the plastic shell McCoy was holding over them. Imai lost his handhold with a sharp, pained hiss. Kirk Jim was lifted bodily off the ice for about a second before McCoy regained control of the shell. He worried more that it would fall apart under the strain than that he would lose hold of it, but either way, the five of them would be caught out in high winds and blowing snow with no protection or visibility beyond what he could provide. “You all right, Imai?” McCoy asked.

“Just skinned my palm a little,” the Lieutenant reported. He wrapped a rag around his hand before grabbing at the handhold again.

“We might be able to make like turtles and walk our way over to the bank,” McCoy suggested.

“Can we get an emergency beam out?” Imai said.

“Do you hear that thunder?” Kirk said. “That makes this an ion storm. We won’t be able to beam through it safely.”

“I didn’t know snowstorms could do that,” Scotty remarked. 

There was a loud, sharp crack, and the molded plastic of the hut gave way, splitting into two sections, one of which caught the wind and twisted upward like a sail, Imai dangling from it, feet kicking. McCoy regained control of the thing, jamming both sections back down, hard, against the ice, careful to tuck Imai’s body inside, but the extra airflow through the crack and the floppiness of the two pieces made keeping them all covered challenging. “Still OK!” Imai shouted.

Kirk reached over to peer into Scotty’s tricorder screen for a moment. “East-northeast!” he shouted. “Bones, try to keep us covered as long as possible. Stay together!” He grabbed Spock’s hand. Spock adjusted his grip so that they each held the other by the wrist, a stronger arrangement than holding hands, then reached out to Imai. Sensible, Spock was stronger than the other two, he should be in the middle. McCoy took Scotty’s wrist in the same way and they all moved forward, Bones, Kirk, and Imai pushing the two plastic sections along with them. The minimal furniture inside the hut dragged along behind, falling through piece by piece through the crack between the sections or slipping out underneath them.

A particularly sharp gust caught the section McCoy was holding in place and flung it into the air. Scotty thought something about never leaving the ship again as the two of them were instantly coated in heavy, wet snow. McCoy had no trouble seeing the three men ahead of him despite the complete whiteout. The pressure from the wind was causing them to veer off course. He pushed forward to catch up with them and grabbed Imai’s wrist, pulling him off the section so that the two strongest people were holding onto the weaker three.

Scotty tried to grab the remaining section of hut where Imai had released it. _Don’t_ , McCoy warned. _If I lose it you’ll go flying off with it._ “Jim,” he shouted. “Let go your end.”

Jim declined to listen to him, which meant he had to watch that end closer to keep it from flipping up and dislocating the captain’s shoulder. They pushed the sheltering wedges ahead of them for several more meters. The wind died down a little, moving now at thirty to forty kilometers per hour, but the snow came down even thicker and harder. Thunder rolled overhead and lightning crackled above them, invisible through the blizzard. They were all soaked and freezing, but it was only a few more meters until they would reach the overhang. Once they did, McCoy shoved the broken off edge into the exposed, frozen mud of the overhang until it stuck tight, angled so that they had a small, wedge shaped shelter in which to huddle.

“Everyone all right?” Kirk asked. He guided Scott to the middle spot, flanked by Imai and himself. Spock took the place closest to the muddy edge of the lake, and McCoy took the least protected other edge out over the edge.

Everyone was shivering except McCoy, who, relieved of the need to keep a tight hold on their plastic shelter and keep track of everyone’s location, spared some energy to heat the space around them to a toasty ninety degrees. He’d have to keep a close eye on the ice, but drying their clothes would be worth the risk.

The snow fell around them, building up just beyond the warmed edge of their makeshift shelter. Kirk tried his communicator. “Kirk to Enterprise.” Nothing.  
“The lodge?” McCoy said, anticipating Kirk by half a second. 

“I’ll switch to direct. Kakabeka Falls Lodge, this is Captain Kirk, I’ve got four other officers with me and we’re trapped in a makeshift shelter at the edge of the lake.”

A female voice replied. “Snow’s too heavy, we won’t be able to get anyone out to you for at least three hours. What’s your status?”

“Anybody hurt?” he asked the room.

Heads shook all around. “Bones, how long can you keep the air warm in here?”

“Indefinitely, but the ice underneath us will start to fail before too long. If I keep the heated area thirty centimeters above the ice it would be safer.” He stopped to think about whether he could get them all off the ground that far.

“Scrounge around for some logs or something we can get under us.” He turned back to the communicator. “We’re good for that long if we have to be.”

“Keep your link open for another ninety seconds so I can relay your position to search and rescue. They’ll be there as soon as they can. Call if anything changes.” The tone of the speaker was serious, professional, and reassuring at the same time, so unlike the sunny flirtatiousness of before that it took him a moment to recognize Alyssa from the rental shed.

“You ought to recruit that one,” he told Kirk, only half joking.

Kirk made a slicing gesture across his throat. The line was open and he could be heard. McCoy didn’t consider that a negative. He turned his attention to getting everyone’s butts off the ice. There were a few fallen logs within a few meters of them. The first disintegrated as soon as he tried to lift it. The second was sealed into the ground by fallen snow and ice. He made a mental map of their surroundings. The overhang was about eight feet up, and above that a stand of pines hung low with falling snow grew out of fairly flat ground. “Captain,” he said, formally.

“Yes, Chief Medical Officer?” Kirk answered in kind, though his tone was decidedly ironic. 

“I think we’ll be safest if we get off the lake entirely. There’s a small space under a stand of pines above us…”

“Show me. I’ve got more experience with survival than you.”

McCoy tidied up the mental map and presented it to Kirk, who scouted along its boundary as though it would expand when he poked at it. After a moment, McCoy just caught him up into a light rapport so that he could access McCoy’s expanded senses directly. _Ten meters north and farther from the lakeshore is better. More cover._ “We need to move quickly. It’s getting heavier out there,” he said to the rest of the group.

“I’ll fly us up.” Technically, five people and forty kilogram piece of plastic should be well within his ability to move, but McCoy hesitated to try to pick them up and move them as a group, as that was six independently moving bodies that could slip away from him in the wind. Scott caught his pensive expression. “If we flip the chunk of dome upside down, it could act like a boat. Easier to lift as one piece.”

“That’s a thought. I’ll have to pull it out of the ice, and we’ll have no cover.”

“Make it quick,” Jim said.

“Sir,” Spock said, “We could climb the embankment…”

“Too much risk of losing somebody,” Kirk said, backing up McCoy’s plan. McCoy pulled one piece of the shelter out of the ice, flipped it so that the hollow faced up, and made a bubble of air to push the snow and wind away for long enough for all of them to climb aboard. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze,” he said. He took the rear and Spock the front, with the other three sandwiched between. McCoy caught up their little boat and lifted it up past the overhang. The wind hit it full force, flipping it fully upside down briefly, so McCoy had to hold onto each of the men individually anyway. Spock flipped off the end and into a pine bough, hard, before McCoy got control of him and was knocked instantly unconscious. It was difficult to maneuver the boat through the tightly woven branches, but McCOy managed to do it, all the while aware of the distressing changes in Spock’s physiological state evolving over the few seconds they were in the air. He put them down sloppily and allowed Kirk, Scotty, and Imai to manhandle their shelter in place among the trees while he lay Spock out flat, a few centimeters above the sodden, snow covered ground, making sure to keep his neck from moving.

Kirk was at his shoulder even as he was still turning Spock onto his back. He skimmed the Vulcan with his enhanced senses, physically first, although the absence of conscious thought processes was deeply concerning both to him and to Kirk, who was doing an admirable job of holding his panic at bay. The Captain forced himself to turn away, trying not to hover, but McCoy caught his shoulder. “I may need you. Stay here.”

He finished assessing Spock’s condition. In the moment that their boat had flipped, the back of Spock’s head had been whipped into the thick bough. He had a hairline fracture of C3, a depressed fracture of the occipital bone uncomfortably near the brainstem, blood already pouring into the subdural space from a torn arteriole. He was deeply unconscious and fading quickly with a wound that would be fatal well within the three hours they were stuck in this limited shelter in the snow. Repairing the injury, if he even could, would take his full concentration, which would mean leaving the other three men to their own devices.

Nothing to be done for that. They had their chunk of plastic and the wind was much less of a problem this far back into the woods. He moved Spock on his cushion of air back toward the protection of their makeshift shelter, then hunkered down to do surgery with no instruments because he hadn’t brought his bag with him to go ice fishing. Last time that would happen. Bleeding first. He had already been holding the responsible arteriole closed to stop the buildup of pressure against the brain, but it was clear that the vessel in question was vital and if he were not able to restore it soon, Spock would suffer permanent brain damage. He moved on to the depressed skull fracture. This, by comparison, was easy. He gingerly pivoted the bit of bone back into place; it stayed there, held still by the surrounding inflammation. He could leave it be as long as he was cautious. The nondisplaced cerivcal fracture merely needed watching, the spinal cord was, at the moment, intact. He wished he had a bone knitter. He wondered if he could figure out how to be a bone knitter. “Jim,” he said, quiet but aloud. “Get back on the line with Alyssa. Let her know we’ve had a critical injury, then get back here.”

It was his fault Spock had gotten hurt. They could have tried Spock’s plan. They could have climbed the embankment, tying themselves together with the rope that still hung over Spock’s shoulder like a sash, but he had to get fancy, assume he had to take care of everybody all the time, and Kirk had deferred to his faulty judgment. For the moment, he needed to repair the arteriole in Spock’s head. He examined the tear, so very like the tear in a much larger artery he had created to kill Gary Mitchell. The repair would need to hold up against Spock’s admittedly lower than human blood pressure, but then, the walls of the vessel were correspondingly more delicate. Merely holding it together until his body’s own repair processes caught up would not be sufficient. He was going to have to make a patch out of tissue already inside Spock’s head. One damn molecule at a time, probably.

He zoomed in a little more. At the edge of his awareness, he noticed that Spock was beginning to stir. He could not be allowed to move. _Jim, fill Spock in and keep him still for me, would you?_

Jim started nervously at being given the responsibility, but wound himself into Spock’s semiconscious mind with an ease that suggested that they had been practicing. A lot. _This is going to take a while,_ he warned them.

He examined the protein chains that meshed together to give strength to the vessel walls. He could manipulate them, but only just. It was, in terms of difficulty, like trying to tie his own hair in knots with the fingers of one hand. A ridiculous surgeon’s trick, one he had been able to do back in med school, but hadn’t tried in ages. It was slow work, simultaneously exacting and monotonous, not unlike a lot of surgical procedures, really. After a few minutes, he got into the rhythm of the process enough that he could start warming the air around the shelter again. He noted the relief of his companions as he did so. It took nearly an hour to repair the tear, ten nanometers at a time. 

When he looked up from his work to see Scotty and Imai huddled beside each other in the shelter and Kirk sitting crosslegged on the snow covered ground, cradling Spock’s head in his hands, he remembered that they wouldn’t even be in this situation if it weren’t for him, and any faint sense of triumph he might have had fled. It bothered him that he had leapt straight to a dumb plan that relied entirely on his new abilities, but it bothered him more that only Spock had made an alternative suggestion, and that Kirk had accepted McCoy’s with so little thought. He kept his attention focused on stabilizing Spock’s cervical spine. He could use a physical brace for his neck if he could find or construct one, but he settled for building a similar fibrin mesh around the injury to hold it in place. 

“Scotty?” he said, not looking up from his work.

“Aye?”

“This was stupid. We should have stayed put. Or walked out.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

He shook his head. “If I hadn’t been so quick to try to fly everybody up here, Spock would have gotten hurt. This…me…who I am now. I might not be sociopathic, but I’m reckless. I think…I think maybe I don’t belong on a ship with you anymore.”

“Bullshit,” Scotty said.

Imai looked up from the ball he’d curled himself into. “It will pass. You’re going through a phase.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Imai shrugged. “You have a shiny new hammer and everything looks like a nail. Happens to everybody. It passes.”

“Next time I’ll get somebody killed. You can tell Luna I’ll let them lock me up. I won’t do their dirty work, but I won’t try to keep my job.”

“Not going to happen,” Kirk said, surprising McCoy who had thought him completely occupied with Spock. “Look, I should have assessed the risk better too instead of just assuming you knew what you were doing. You’ve always been a terrible pilot.” Gosh, thanks, McCoy thought to himself, although it was objectively true.

“How’s Spock doing?” McCoy asked. He could check himself, but he didn’t want to tax a brain that was just beginning to slowly clear the hematoma that had begun to form before McCoy repaired the artery.

“Quiet. He tried to get into a healing trance, but he can’t focus.”

Kirk’s comm chirped. He pulled it off his belt and flipped it open. “Kirk here.”

“This is Alyssa. We’re sending a transport to your position. Sit tight.”

The snow was coming down fast. At least four inches of new, heavy snow had already been added to what was already on the ground, and visibility was still awful. Now that the wind had dies down to a breeze, the fat flakes absorbed all remaining sound as they fell. The silence was thick, though not truly oppressive, the whiteness around them isolating, as though nowhere existed but here, bracketed by laced pine boughs and a garish bright blue plastic shell. McCoy could push through the silence and the white blanket isolating them from the rest of the world, but he could also choose not to, and he did. The air moved into and out of his lungs, his heart beat steadily. Spock’s heart raced, as well it should, and he remained stable and content to be held firmly by Jim. Scotty was singing “Donald McGillavrey” under his breath, but noticed McCoy’s eyes on him and switched to “The Ball at Kerrymuir,” smirking.

A shuttlecraft approached. It was a big one, built for space as well as atmosphere, and not phased by a little, make that a lot, of snow. He counted two inside it, probably a pilot and a medic. It landed lightly on the ice, its wide, flattened landing struts distributing the weight. Kirk’s communicator chirped again. He didn’t answer it. His face had gone tense and blank-eyed—Spock’s shocked nerves must be coming back to life then. He sampled discomfort, edging toward pain. The communicator chirped a second time and Scotty reached around Kirk to grab it and flip it open. “You’ve all become daft as brushes,” he groused. “Scott here. The Captain is indisposed. No, no, he’s not hurt. You’re homing in on us now?”

The two women from the shuttlecraft were working their way up the steep embankment to their shelter. They took a few minutes to reach it, but when they arrived, they had an antigrav stretcher and cervical collar and he could have kissed them. The doctor bent down to run her tricorder over Spock, paused, and waved her hand underneath his body. “Portable antigrav, sort of,” McCoy explained.

“Help me get the stretcher under him,” she said, first wrapping the cervical collar around his neck. They maneuvered it under him and strapped him in, then McCoy released him so that the stretcher bore his weight.

Imai approached Kirk, who was still attached to Spock’s head like a limpet, and talked to him quietly for a moment until he was willing to back away and let McCoy and the other doctor direct the stretcher back to the shuttlecraft. Once they were all settled, Scott having taken the seat next to McCoy, the shuttle took off for the cabins. He didn’t have enough time on the shuttle to properly think through how he was going to tell Luna that she had won. He didn’t want to tell her she was right. She was still as wrong as she had ever been, but so was he. Even if it was some sort of phase, he wasn’t willing to let a phase potentially kill people he cared about.

*

Pacing wasn’t effectively spending McCoy’s restless energy while he waited for Tom and Luna in the infirmary. The local doctor, another Lakehead extension graduate as it turned out, had allowed him to finish repairing Spock’s skull and blood vessels and the Vulcan had finally settled into a healing trance that ought to clear out the rest of the blood pooling where it didn’t belong.

Jim found him standing at the window counting snowflakes. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

McCoy disagreed. “I’m a two year old sitting at the helm of a starship.”

“You exaggerate. Spock and I are getting married, here, at the end of the week. Repairs to the ship and treatment of the crew is going to take another week after that. You have some time.”

“You stand behind me when you talk to me,” McCoy said, “so you can’t see my eyes. I’ll be a diplomatic nightmare.”

“You were always a diplomatic nightmare, Bones.”

“Commander Luna!” Kirk said, his voice bright as if he were happy to see her. “Have you considered my offer?”

“My superiors have considered your suggestion. Come with me. Bring McCoy.”

McCoy followed, not quite meekly, but uncertainly. What sort of deal had Kirk worked out with these people and why had he not been consulted? Kirk was shielding, not that it would make a difference if McCoy actually intended to go on a fishing expedition, but clearly he was not meant to know just yet. He could refuse. He could always resign. They turned into a small conference room, where Tom, Imai, and Admiral Enwright already sat. Luna waved kirk and McCoy into the other seats and began. “Captain Kirk believes that it is in the best interest of Starfleet if Doctor McCoy remains on the Enterprise. He notes that the Doctor poses a striking figure in his current state and therefore would not be suitable for undercover work, and that his posting to the flagship of the fleet presents opportunities that might not otherwise arise.”

Enwright frowned. “I am still not comfortable with _that_ having the run of a starship.”

“Well I’m not comfortable being referred to as ‘that’!” McCoy snapped.

Kirk took his turn to speak. “Which is why I agreed to allow an operative from Starfleet Intelligence to be posted aboard the Enterprise. I have requested Lieutenant Imai for the posting for reasons I previously specified. He gets along well with the bridge crew, is cross trained as a medtech, and he has agreed to use his own abilities to speed up the training of the crew in defensive shielding.”

“No,” Luna said.

Enwright nodded. “Imai is insufficiently experienced and does not have the necessary rank. In addition, under the circumstances there may be reason to suspect where his loyalties might turn in the event there is a conflict with the asset during a mission.”

“We’re not a foreign power, Admiral,” Tom said.

“You’re a bunch of freaks. And you have read too many X-Men comics.”

“I think you’re the one who’s read too many X-Men comics,” Tom countered, but straightened his jacket, took a centering breath, and rephrased. “I apologize. It deeply concerns me when the Federation or its representatives refer to citizens using language that denies their status as persons.”

“Gentlemen,” Luna interrupted. “Doctor McCoy will retain his position as Chief Medical Officer on the Enterprise. Captain Kirk will remain as its Captain, and Commander Spock as its Science Officer. I will, however, be assuming the role of First Officer. This will both alleviate the ongoing understaffing issue on the Enterprise and ensure that there is a member of the senior bridge crew not compromised by what may be an emerging codependent dynamic.”

Codependent dynamic. McCoy controlled his temper with an effort. “But that means Spock takes a demotion!”

“And he will no longer be required to make command decisions in the event his life partner is seriously injured or killed.”

Kirk turned to McCoy. “It’s a workable compromise. Give it a chance.”

McCoy thought through his options. He could still try to resign his commission, but it was extremely likely that if this compromise fell apart, Kirk and Spock would be the ones made to suffer. And while he, personally, believed Spock’s demotion to be insulting and possibly racist, he also knew that Spock had no real desire for command and might appreciate the opportunity to conduct more research. He was kidding himself. Spock would resent the decision, resent him for making it necessary. Or worse, he’d internalize it as the result of his inadequacies, the damn hobgoblin. “I assume you’ve discussed this with Spock already?”

“As a possibility, yes. Before we met you at the falls.” 

“You can’t assume I know best all the time, because I don’t. This thing in my head, it makes me faster, makes me impatient.” He glared at Luna, who held his gaze without flinching. “And you. I’m a doctor, not an asset.”

“Of course. Doctor,” she said. Her smile was subdued, but triumphant. Section 31. On the Enterprise. Joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This episode is done.
> 
> I expect I may come back to this timeline eventually, but I am going to be working on other projects for a while, in particular the Amanda centric AOS kidfic, the MASH crossover (I know, right?), and whatever falls out of my brain next.
> 
> In case you want to state a preference, I have an all OCs Dominion War Academy epic rattling around in my brain, along with an epistolary series with Trelane, A next gen thing with Geordi and B4, a Potterverse thing that might become a tangential Trek crossover at the end and about 30 other things.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as prairiedawn.
> 
> Comments are great. Substantive comments that start semirelevant conversations are extra great.


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